Slenderness effect and upper-bound slenderness limit of SSTT-confined HSC column

Abstract

In designing the HSC columns confined with steel-straps tensioning technique (SSTT), safe and economic are two important aspects. The designed member should not be too expensive but guarantee minimum safety. Generally, the effectiveness of confinement became less pronounced as the slenderness of column increased. This is mainly due to the flexure-dominated behaviour of slender column and the non-contribution of the confinement to the flexural stiffness of the concrete. In this paper, a numerical analysis was conducted in the view to establish the upper-bound slenderness limit of SSTT-confined HSC columns. The utilisation of SSTT beyond this limit is not recommended. The slender SSTT-confined HSC column is considered to reach its upper-bound slenderness limit when the ductility enhancement is less than 5%.